From Mad Men to Flowers in the Attic, Kiernan Shipka likes being dramatic

Kiernan Shipka stars as Cathy in a new HBO movie adaptation of the bestselling gothic novel Flowers in the Attic.

Photograph by: James Dittiger

PASADENA, Calif. — Kiernan Shipka, 14-year-old Sally Draper in Mad Men, cites Grace Kelly as one of her inspirations. So it should come as little surprise that Shipka embraced the role of Catherine Leigh Dollanganger, the young teen protagonist and narrator of Flowers in the Attic, a new Lifetime adaptation of the 1979 gothic thriller by V.C. Andrews.

Kelly was a mainstay in such early Alfred Hitchcock classics as Rear Window and Dial M for Murder. Shipka, at age 14, has cultivated a reputation for playing wise-beyond-their-years adolescents in adult-oriented dramas, much as Kelly, older and wiser at the time, established herself as one of the most glamorous, adult performers of her day.

Flowers in the Attic, with its themes of psychological extortion and consensual incest, is difficult material, but Shipka — grounded and by all accounts well adjusted in her actual, day-to-day life — felt she was up to the challenge.

Flowers in the Attic tells the tale of young siblings locked in an attic by their grandmother as part of a scheme to finagle a sizable family inheritance. Flowers has sold more than 40 million copies in book form, and spawned four book sequels. It’s still popular today, despite having been adapted into an indifferent feature film, starring Kristy Swanson and Louise Fletcher, in the late 1980s. Ellen Burstyn plays Dollanganger’s grandmother in the newly minted version and Heather Graham plays her mother, Corrine, played by Victoria Tennant in the first film.

The new version debuts Sat., Jan. 18 on Lifetime Canada, the same day it makes its U.S. debut.

Shipka was aware of Flowers’ popularity — and controversy — when she took on the role, but she wasn’t intimidated.

“I get a script, and I sort of take it and work with whatever’s there,” Shipka said at the winter meeting of the TV Critics Association. “I like dramatic material. I think that playing complicated is much more fun. That’s my take on it, anyway. Even though I like more dramatic scenes in whatever I do, there’s a solid separation between my life and my character’s life. Luckily, it’s never seeped into my everyday life.”

Shipka prefers to prepare in private, on her own, without coaching or counselling from her parents or an acting coach.

“I read the sides (lines) on my own, usually,” she said, softly. “It’s really my take on everything. I mean, obviously, my mom reads the material as well, but it’s really not necessary. It’s so that, once you get on set and you get in the feel, you’re more into the character.

“I’m more excited than frightened. As an actor I can of do what I feel in the moment. I’ve never been coached or told to do it in a specific way.”

Some of Shipka’s most challenging, toughest scenes in Flowers in the Attic came opposite Burstyn, an Academy Award nominee for The Exorcist and a winner the following year for Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

“Working with Ellen is sort of every actor’s dream,” Shipka said. “To be able to do such intense scenes with such an accomplished actress, too, was just such a cool experience for me.”

Shipka has outside interests and hobbies to keep her mind occupied.

“I’m a little bit of a golfer. I’m a really bad golfer. So I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a skilled golfer, but I do golf.”

Shipka saves her drama for work. As a TV watcher, she prefers comedy — “Iove well-written comedies, so Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory, I think, both really knock it out of the park” — but her work is all about drama.

“Definitely, definitely, the more drama is the better. I really love challenges. As an actor that’s what I love to do, and it’s the most rewarding.”

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